（・θ・）Birb of the week: Secretary bird

These birbs of prey have notably very long legs with a nice pair of pants to match! Don’t let it deceive you, they can deliver quite the kick to their prey !

The Moscow monument commemorating Laika (russian: Лайка), the first living being to reach space, unveiled in 2008 in front of the facility in which she was prepared for her historic flight in November 3, 1957.

A Gray Squirrel checks in with a nesting Great-horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, FL, USA.

photograph by Harry Collins

Finally some good fucking news

fgdgsjskahdfas

i am, cryying;

"tests inconclusive, we will simply have to play with them a little more (⁠◡⁠ ⁠ω⁠ ⁠◡⁠)"

The gaming will continue until our understanding of rat morale improves

In tears

Ankole Cattle, Africa

Hey Tumblr, new crab just dropped

(via NOAA's Insta)

@plaguedocboi do you know who this teeny little babby is?

I believe it’s a juvenile king crab species!

An Ivory Okimono Of a Dragon Having His Teeth Examined. Meiji Period, Signed Nimin/Futsumin.

Trying to give a cat a pill.

Trying to keep a cat out of your snacks, too.

[ID: A carved ivory figurine showing a seated elderly man with boxes and bowls in front of him. He is holding open the mouth of a sinuous dragon who is looking up at him; the rest of the dragon's body coils and curls away to one side, and at one point enormous sharp talons are visible, but the dragon is clearly no threat to the man.]

carcass acres

civic duty

context: the heritage foundation is trying to launder data in support of doge by sending a survey to only their supporters and using blatantly leading questions. the survey takes less than 5 minutes and they don't verify your email

you CAN do it multiple times if you so wish

Link

[Text ID: "$3,267,000 to build a transgender healt guide website meant to "increase access to gender-affirming care," also known as mutilation." The three options below are "Not supportive" "Somewhat supportive" and "Very supportive." "Very supportive" is selected. End ID.]

Couldn't resist a bit of Valentine's fun with the birds at work! This is one of our ambassador red-tailed hawks, Jesse, trying to get at her snack! Jesse is a non-releasable ambassador, not a pet, and she had been at our facility for 25 years this year, so she deserves some love! (She is not very good at enrichment, so sometimes she needs 'help!')

I just LOVE Jesse!

We have 30 days until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laws are rescinded. This is the 50-year bedrock of American conservation. Normally, these actions take years but the administration has provided 30 days for public comment gutting clean water and clean air. Drop what you’re doing, before you make any more calls or read any more social media posts, please populate the Federal Register with dissent.

A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .

C. Fill in your comment, and info at the bottom, and SUBMIT COMMENT.

I just did that (2/27/2025), and the message on that website said:

The comment period ends March 27, not March 30!!!

I strongly suggest (in your own words) couching your dissent in Trump's (and followers') own rhetoric. Here's what I said:

Removing these regulations will make America sick again, cause neurological and intellectual impairment in children (due to less regulation of lead), and raise the level of preventable cancers in adults (due to less regulation of known carcinogens),thus reducing American productivity and greatness.

One thing the analysts back in 2012 were right about is that they’d stop calling it “Obamacare” the second it started working and lo and behold anytime it was actually threatened under Trump it became The ACA and now Leftists who were in Kindergarten when the ACA was passed think Democrats have added nothing to this country.

I don't think a lot of people remember pre-existing conditions. Like it was a thing for a long time where my mom fought to try to avoid having my brother diagnosed with asthma because she didn't want him tagged with pre-existing condition. I wasn't officially diagnosed with autism or depression or anything because my parents didn't want to me to have a pre-existing condition when I became an adult that could prevent me from having insurance. Insurance companies could flat out refuse to pay for treatment if you had a pre-existing condition that could have caused the issue you were wanting them to pay for. That's not a thing anymore. My diagnosis of lupus isn't going to affect my ability to find insurance or use it to pay for lupus-related care if I change insurance.

Remember that bit from Parks and Rec? Yeah, that's kind of like what it was like. That was back in 2012. The ACA made it so that:

1. No insurance plan can reject you, charge you more, or refuse to pay for essential health benefits for any condition you had before your coverage started. This means that if you get diagnosed with cancer, insurance companies can't refuse to cover you. It means that if you have asthma, insurance companies can't refuse to pay for inhalers because you had it before you signed on with them.

2. Once you’re enrolled, the plan can’t deny you coverage or raise your rates based only on your health. This means that when I was diagnosed with lupus, my insurance couldn't kick me off or make me pay more.

3. Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) also can't refuse to cover you or charge you more because of your pre-existing condition. This is actually a big one, because it meant that the only coverage some people could afford wasn't able to kick you off, refuse to cover you, or charge you more because of something like a heart murmur you had at birth. That was a real concern for us when my oldest was born. They had a heart murmur and we were terrified we would never get insurance coverage for them.

Those were real things that really happened to millions of Americans. They would get diagnosed with cancer and get kicked of their insurance. They would have a semi high blood pressure reading one time and have a heart attack 10 years later and the insurance would refuse to pay for any of it.

Obamacare killed that. And the GOP fought like hell against it. Can you imagine everyone whose ever had COVID not being covered at all under insurance? Or being charged 3 or 4 times more? Or being charged 3 times more and still not having coverage for anything that might stem from COVID? Because that's where we would be without the ACA.

my health insurance would be 40,000 per year without the ACA. And that's only because my state had a high risk pool.

there's a special kind of glee derived from referring to your pet's collar as their clothes

Me, searching the house for the dog's collars, so they can go to doggy daycare: WHERE ARE YOUR PANTS? YOU CAN'T GO TO SCHOOL WITHOUT PANTS.

Taking the collar off for any reason: Ooooh, you're nakey now!

Honestly bizarre that tomatoes get all the flack for “not being a vegetable” because they're technically a fruit when:

A) There are a ton of fruits that get categorised as vegetables. Like this also applies to pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers.

B) The fucking mushrooms are standing there at the back of the crowd in this witch trial, trying to look inconspicuous because they somehow got into the vegetable club with no fucking controversy despite the fact that they're not even plants.

"technically tomatoes are fruits--" THAT MUSHROOM OVER THERE IS MORE CLOSELY RELATED TO A FUCKING SHIH TZU THAN IT IS TO LITERALLY ANY PLANT